Spring Fever

The weather has been warming up around here and I think everybody’s getting a case of Spring Fever. Like everyone else, I want to be outside, going places… and visions of the beach are dancing in my head.

From my perspective, I’ve been bouncing around on various projects, unable to focus on any of them for very long. I’m over halfway through with the weird west tale that’s due on June 1 but I got sidetracked by a return to the Rabbit Heart sequel. But I didn’t get too far on that one because I got distracted by a great idea I had for the opening to Lazarus Gray Volume 5… Hopefully I’ll be able to pick one and stick with it for awhile. I *can* work on multiple projects but I tend to get frustrated with all of them when I do that, feeling that none of them are making adequate progress.

I *think* I’ll focus on Lazarus Gray for the next few days but if something shiny catches my attention, I might end up working on Gravedigger Volume 2 or something lol

Anyway, the Pulp Factory Awards were given out at the Windy City Con this weekend — congrats to the various winners. George Sellas was up for Best Interior Art but he didn’t win a Pulp Factory Award to match the one he picked up in the Pulp Ark Awards this year.

This week’s episode of The Shadow Fan should be a packed episode — I’ll be talking “The Spoils of The Shadow” (a classic novel), Masks # 5 from Dynamite *and* the first storyline from the Andy Helfer Shadow series that DC published back in the late Eighties. I will say this about Masks… I love issue one but every issue since has been worse than the one before. It makes me very worried for Chris Roberson’s upcoming run on The Shadow comic book. Based upon issue 1 and a couple of pulp-related interviews that I had read, I was excited about his tenure. Now, I’m not so sure.

For dedicated followers of the blog – are there are any regular features that you’d like to see? Right now I do a New Pulp Recommendations on Friday and a Saturday Matinee on (duh) Saturdays. I’ve noticed that the New Pulp Recommendations hits have been extremely variable on Fridays – some weeks they’re through the roof and sometimes my site hits crash on that day. Saturday Matinee, on the other hand, has proven surprisingly popular! But would you like to see more of that kind of thing? Marvel Heroic RPG Wednesdays? A regular movie review feature? Or do you prefer when I just shoot the breeze every day?

Not sure if I’ve mentioned it on the blog (I know I did on Twitter) but I’ve received the first Origins page from George Sellas. The ‘cursed’ Lazarus Gray Origins project has been discussed at length before – originally it was going to be Anthony Castrillo working on it, then it was Mark Propst, then it was Castrillo, then it was Sellas, then it was Propst and now it’s back to Sellas. Instead of doing the original five pages, George will be taking just the Lazarus page and expanding it into two pages. The other pages of the script (origins for Samantha, Morgan, Eun & Assistance Unlimited) will hopefully appear at some future date.

Long story short, page one looks INCREDIBLE. You guys will *really* like this!

Our model today is Mellisa Clarke, a glamor model who was one of the visual inspirations for Charity Grace (aka Gravedigger).